Yes! It would be nice to get back to what we're used to, instead of taking two steps back for every one we take forward.

@Dash - ok thanks!

If you guys want an idea of the Friday I had, it can be summed up like this:

The washing machine is broken, no idea when it'll be fixed, so we had to go to the laundromat.

My mom almost hit another car head-on on the way there, would have had I not yelled at her to swerve because I was actually paying attention.

The sink at the laundromat doesn't have cold water, so I scalded my hands multiple times trying to wash them.
The guy working there was outside smoking, so hopefully my newly-clean clothes didn't absorb that.

My laundry baskets tipped over via the ride home. At least I had it all in a drawstring bag, so no scattering all over the car.

The radiator in the dining room started leaking, so hard that it leaked through the floorboards into the basement. My mom was up late trying to get someone to come help. Some guy came and managed to stop the leak, but we can't run the heat until it's fixed, and we can't get any help until Monday, so no heat all weekend, and it's our first snowstorm of the season.

My throat is hurting, and seems a bit swollen on the right side. Not severe, but still worried. Everything irritates it.


My pants are hanging down in the basement to dry, because they're cotton and would shrink in the dryer, but they got in the way with the whole leaking-radiator-into-the-basement thing, so they should probably be washed again, but we don't have a washing machine working, so who knows how soon that'll be...


So yeah, Friday sucked

Oy, sounds like Friday 13th...

Oy, sounds like Friday 13th...

That's next month.

I'm sorry to hear this! I hope this week is going better

My throat is better, but the radiator issue will cost more than $800 to fix...

Got the neighbor to take a look at the washing machine, and he fixed it up today. So no more laundromats for me, at least for now

He also said he thinks the radiator can be fixed in twenty minutes for way cheaper, and that the situation that we were told would cost over $800 was only for extreme cases, so that shouldn't be so bad now, either

Oh I'm so sorry to read what is happening to you, I hope everything is going to be fine as you see soon ...

Well, that's good to hear! Sounds like when it rains it pours lately, doesn't it?

Been hard to keep the spirits up as of late. I got told last week we're probably gonna be taking an 8% pay cut, plus there's been a rumor that someone's job is going to get cut, or laid off. The problem with working for a church is if someone gets laid off or fired, they don't qualify for unemployment because churches don't pay taxes. =P

Well, the next few months are gonna be fun! lol

Oh I'm so sorry to read what is happening to you, I hope everything is going to be fine as you see soon ...

Things are starting to get a little better. It's just been a bad year in general, and Minnesota winters are some of the worst

Why didn't you just call Mac? His phone numbers are here somewhere: 555-8990, was his most recent number.

With a SAK, ductape and paperclips you can get a long way.

Things are getting more and more grim over here. They closed down the bars and restaurants again for at least a month. That's another month of no income for those people and there is a curfew going on. Numbers are still rising. Yesterday we had over 13.000 cases. This is the biggest number ever since the beginning of the outbreak. It's never been this bad before, yet I do find it interesting that we're this bad, while we have been wearing masks for months. There are more contaminations then when we didn't wore the masks. Also 50 people died according to the numbers, this has been the most since May 17th.

Oh I'm so sorry to read what is happening to you, I hope everything is going to be fine as you see soon ...

Things are starting to get a little better. It's just been a bad year in general, and Minnesota winters are some of the worst

if that's any consolation, it's not a good year for me too, but i sympathize with you ... i think it's because of the cold winter in your condition?

Bonjour, j’ai lu sur votre profil que vous êtes de Belgique, je peu vous demander si vous parlez Français ?

We actually have had to use duct tape to seal the radiator for the time being so that we can still run it a bit

Oh I'm so sorry to read what is happening to you, I hope everything is going to be fine as you see soon ...

Things are starting to get a little better. It's just been a bad year in general, and Minnesota winters are some of the worst

if that's any consolation, it's not a good year for me too, but i sympathize with you ... i think it's because of the cold winter in your condition?

Yeah the cold here is unbearable

Dang, it's been a while. I'm still alive, for the most part. Got laid off back in November and got a new job working for Amazon. It's a 3rd shift night job, and it's been like... 50hrs a week... so I've been working a LOT.

I, unfortunately, did catch COVID a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, it was just a mild case and I start back work next week.

So, a lot of life changes and adjustments lately.

I've completely stopped paying attention to the new MacGyver... I just completely lost interest in it. Though, I still watch the original on occasion for a mood lift.

Hopefully I'll be able to have a new computer here in the next month or so... as long as there are no more setbacks. >_<

Hope everyone is doing okay though!

Hello guys. I guess I too have been out of the picture for a while.

Glad to hear you are okay, Jedi. Sorry about your job.

I was laid off my job initially back in August 2019 with the option to stay on at a reduced salary. Naturally i took it since i couldn't find alternative employment. Then COVID hit and during lockdown was laid off indefinitely. Was without a job for 6 months. I too applied for a job at Amazon as a technical support consultant but because of my internet they scrapped my application instead of giving me a chance to upgrade (How nice of them).

Thankfully, i have since found a great job working at a steel company and its been interesting. We have all been lucky and have not caught COVID and slowly trying to put my life back together this year. but boy what a challenge it was last year.

Hopefully soon i will be able to have some time and frequent more often.

Most of my spare time has been spent either catching up on some reading or getting into the old retro stuff again what with the release of the C64 Maxi (Recreation of the Commodore 64) and supporting the re-release Kickstarter campaign to order my very own ZX Spectrum Next machine (A fully intergrated recreation of what wouyld have been the next ZX Spectrum Computer.

Can't say i have much time for bigger games since i spend roughly 30 minutes on average to play a game. I did get Cyberpunk over the holidays but have not had much time to play it.

Hope you are all keeping well, healthy and safe. Speak soon.

denizen

Hello there, nice to read from you.

As you probably noticed, I've posted reboot-related stuff but otherwise, didn't find the time to visit other threads as well.

In Switzerland, we're still in partial shutdown (non-food stores and event locations are closed until at least end of February) and under homeoffice order. I was lucky to keep my job while 6 people at my work place got their laid-off-notice just this week. My departement got lucky because one colleague will be retired in May and another one quit for April.

So, doesn't mean we're safe if expenses stay higher than the money coming in. Naturally, motivation and morale aren't all that great and while I do have a lot more free time after work (with no-where to go as long as we're advised to stay home and not travel), I don't seem to get anything done at home.

My place looks as messy as back when I lived in the student's residence at the age of 20. Luckily, there's no one to see it if there's no one visiting . But staying home so often really wears you down; especially in Winter.

My mom got the first vaccine last week so at least that's one thing less to worry. But roll-out is so slow, it's only elderly and high risk people getting vaccinated now so I might not get mine until Summer/Autumn.

As someone in America where browbeating everyone about how terrible capitalism is and some other -ism is the way to go seems to be a common fun-time activity nowadays, I get a wry chuckle anytime I hear from my overseas friends that it's really no better for them either.

Digressing from op-eds, I'm doing OK. I've been able to get out and do most of the things I'd expect to do this time of year. Here in Wisconsin, it's basically been political football over everything and we've basically been able to do a decent chunk of what we normally would with precautions. Pretty much everything is open at some level, though there's obviously nowhere near the levels of people partaking for obvious reasons. What has resulted is the greatest bout of collective malaise I've ever seen from society.

Also, doesn't help that after having a mild winter up until a few weeks ago we have gotten blasted with the most snow I've seen in a decade (though it reminds of how it was as a kid, which is nice), and are in the midst of a multi-week polar vortex (I swear these names the meteorological world comes up with) of freezing cold.

I think people are cautiously optimistic right now for the future, but as we've seen that ebbs and flows greatly on almost a day-to-day basis....all it takes is clicking the wrong article or social media post... On the plus side, Wisconsin vaulted to the head of vaccine distribution among the states as somebody apparently figured out some level of efficiency so hopefully that keeps up.

Otherwise, *shrugs* (been doing a lot of that)

It's been so quiet here lately.

It's been a crazy time with the lockdowns and everything. I've hit rock bottom a few times but now I also know where my limits are especially when it comes to news reports and all. I'm so fed up with the news and the so-called experts who claim to know the truth while actually none of what they say are helping or changing the situation. So I've stopped watching the news and also laying low on other sorts of news. Currently the numbers are going down in the country and they've been doing so for some time.

The vaccination has started but the entire campaign is a joke in my opinion that I think it's a classic delay tactic before we can return to the old normal. They are unable to deliver the amount of the orders, there are not enough needles, not enough syringes, some of the stations were unable to open because the deliveries weren't done. I mean, come on. They have been lecturing us on how important it is to follow the measures to a T and that if the numbers go up it's the fault of population and not theirs and their sometimes even ridiculous measures and they can't even organise a solid campaign. But with the numbers going down and the campaign is finally starting up, there finally seems to be some perspective coming. The barbershops are open again since Saturday and there is more and more talk about reopening the bars and the restaurants by the end of next month, early April. Also there is talk about doing festivals again, if not after the summer vacation in September, which is the set month to finish the vaccination. Then everything should be safe again. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I've started some volunteering work. Twice a week, I help out in a healthcare center making appointments for patients and answering calls. It was pretty much the first thing I did this year and it makes me feel I've started the year a whole lot better then the past years in general. At least I'm doing something instead of just sitting home without a job. Those days are hopefully behind me as well. I just hope I can find a job that I can combine with this.

You're working at Amazon?

Where's my package?!!

You're working at Amazon?

Where's my package?!!

I have no idea. XD I work in receiving and process returns. It's not awful for a warehouse job. It's fairly simple, but the work is physically taxing. I'm usually wiped by the time I get a day off and I'll just sleep the entire day away. lol

And the job further proves that humanity needs a massive wake-up call about entitlement. I'll get items that are just thrown in a box, or trash bag, like an angry five year old who didn't get what they wanted. My personal favorite was a perfectly fine painting that was returned as "defective" because it didn't look good in their living room. Thankfully, I can disagree with customers and make the item sellable, otherwise, it would become unsellable and probably destroyed. You see a lot of that come through...

I didn't know this was a thing, but apparently, people buy fake Christmas trees, use it for Christmas and then return it. Usually poorly repackaged. =P I had to process a lot of those in January.

Now I know how MacGyver felt in Log Jam... XD

Hope everyone is doing well!!!

Got used to my new job at Amazon. Hard work, but it pays great and I got all the good benefits, so I'm happy. I just work a lot, and the night shift hours are a bit brutal at times.

I was also able to get my first tattoo. It's not a MacGyver tattoo, but it's still pretty cool as I got Justin to do the tattoo for me. You can check it out on my IG HERE or Justin's IG HERE.

I will admit, it hurt like hell... but I was in the chair for three hours. XD

Good for you on the job and the tattoo Jedi!

So... how are we doing over here?? I've been trying to stop by a bit more often.

Hey, I'm finally back again every time I think that I'll be able to get on here more, life gets crazy. How y'all been?

Besides work, posting and blogging keeps me pretty busy. Yet life during a pandemic is still pretty boring. Nothing exciting to talk about

Cool cool, boring can be good sometimes lol.

I keep starting projects and then something else breaks so it either gets added to the list or I have to abandon the original project to do the other one if it's "urgent." Like, for example, I started tearing out carpet in one room so I could replace it with like those floor stickers that look like wood but are actually vinyl. Then, haha, I had to stop cuz like people got sick, I had to "fix" a leaky roof, and the toilet started to leak. But, I finally caught up ( I think lol) so I'm happy It made me so happy when I got the flooring in So boring might be welcome for a little while XD

Hey guys! Hope you all are doing well!!

I'm currently on vacation. FINALLY! I've been in need of one for a while now. It's not super long, but enough for me to rest up and catch on on things and friends/family.

Good news is that I've been actually doing well at Amazon. I went from being a processor to being an auditor. I also have been doing things like sorting and waterspidering (which is just moving finished product to the docks). Been a very interesting experience. Very hard work, but not difficult. Just physically demanding. I'm usually pretty sore at the end of the day.

Despite that, I've been well recognized as a hard worker and I'm well liked by management... so, that's good!

Got a new tattoo done as well, which was finished earlier this month... which is a Jedi/Sith ferret combo. You can see it HERE.

Other than that, I'm managing life. Just trying to keep my head above water! XD

How is everyone else doing???

Vacation. Haven't been on one in nine years by now.

Currently dealing with own my life which is already as hard as it is.

It's been quiet here lately. I guess everyone pretty much moved to the Facebook page.